Mobile communication devices, such as smart phones, and other mobile computing devices are becoming ubiquitous companions for users. Such devices are used for various purposes including communicating with other people, storing entertainment media such as music, pictures, and video, storing and maintaining contact information, managing personal calendars and meetings, and the like. As such, typical mobile communication devices and other portable computing devices often store large amounts of data, some of which may be personal and confidential (e.g., banking information). Unfortunately, the loss of the mobile communication device can result in the permanent loss of the stored data as well as compromise of the security of the data. Although many mobile communication/computing device include some form of password protection, the typical protection scheme is relatively trivial that may be overcome by a “brute force” method (e.g., protection schemes having a four-digit password).
The management and protection of personal data is further complicated by the use of multiple mobile communication/computing device. That is, many people own and use multiple mobile communication/computing devices such as a smart phone, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, a mobile internet device, a personal digital assistant, and more stationary computing devices such as a desktop computer. Each of these communication/computing devices may have some personal data stored thereon, which may be unique to that particular device such that user's personal data is spread across the multiple devices. As such, there is no one device having all of the user's personal data requiring the user to access a particular communication/computing device to retrieve particular personal data.